Absorbent articles, such as diapers, incontinence garments, training pants, and the like are well known in the art. These articles, which are often disposable, are capable of absorbing and retaining fluids and other bodily discharges. Some absorbent articles are designed to look and feel like conventional underpants for a variety of reasons, such as to promote an improved sense of normalcy (in the case of incontinence garments) or to incentivize a child who is in the toilet training process.
Some absorbent articles, such as incontinence garments and toilet training pants, come pre-assembled in a wear configuration to more closely resemble conventional underpants. In particular, front and back waist regions of such training pants are typically attached at a seam (either permanently or refastenably) to define a wear configuration of the pant having a waist opening and leg openings. Such seams may be configured for selective, manual separation to enable a donned absorbent article to be removed without having to remove the wearer's clothing or shoes.
Some users may find the attachment difficult to open because the attachment is designed to withstand stresses placed on the attachment by movement of the wearer without unintentionally opening (i.e., separation of the seam). Accordingly, some absorbent articles include a finger tab to assist users in opening the attachment.
In some absorbent articles, finger tabs are formed separately from and attached to the article during the manufacturing process. Manufacturing such articles, however, requires additional, complicated processing steps (e.g., forming the finger tabs, registering the finger tabs with a moving web or article, and attaching the finger tabs to the moving web or article) as compared to articles without finger tabs. As a result, certain absorbent articles, such as articles manufactured in a cross-machine direction (i.e., processes in which the longitudinal direction of the article is oriented perpendicular to the conveying direction of the process), lack satisfactory means of separating the seams of the article.
Thus, there exists a need for an absorbent article having finger tabs that facilitate separating the seams of the article. Moreover, there exists a need for a simplified process for manufacturing such articles that does not require complicated processing steps.